JiminQueens2's blog

Titans Tower was pretty much deserted. Wonder Girl had organized a “Girl’s Day Out” and taken Starfire and Raven with her, Kid Flash was off moping about his life somewhere, and Changeling and Cyborg were doing a public appearance somewhere on Long Island. That had left Dick Grayson, known to the world as Robin, at loose ends, and, on an impulse, he’d called Roy (Speedy) Harper and invited him for a workout.

The two young men were in the weight room, working their powerful legs. The Olympic bar had six 20 kilogram weight plates on it, and Roy was watching Dick as he easily dropped his body into a squat, and then pushed up again. “Eight…nine…TEN!” he cried. He quickly stepped behind Dick and eased the barbell off the Titan leader’s shoulders, then, as Dick just as quickly stepped out of the way, half-eased half-dropped it to the mat.

“Looking good, Dickie,” Roy smirked. “No wonder chicks go nuts for your butt.”

“Envious?” Dick teased back as he toweled himself off. “And of me, or of the women?”

“Clown.” Roy bent over and picked up the barbell, holding it in front of his muscular thighs. “Spot me? I’ve got one more set.”

“Of course.” Dick moved behind Roy as Roy lifted the barbell above his head and brought it down across his shoulders. “Ten reps?”

“Ten reps.”

Dick stepped back and let Roy begin his set. After Roy had squatted down and straightened up five times, Dick began to count down. “Five more…four more…three…two…one….DONE!!!!”

He took the bar off Roy’s shoulders and let Roy stagger out of the way before easing it back to the mat. Roy made his way to the towel rack and pulled a fresh one off, wiping the sweat off his ripped body. Dick’s analytic mind noted the differences between the two of them. The obvious ones – Dick’s jet black hair contrasted with Roy’s red, his short, compact, gymnast’s body with Roy’s taller, leaner body. Roy’s heart-shaped face with his square-jawed one.

Less obvious, but interesting (interesting to Dick, at least) was that they’d both chosen shorts to match their eyes. Dick, who was starting to get very tired of green, had chosen tight blue exercise shorts for their workout, while Roy, whose eyes were the green of a forest, had picked shorts to match.

Roy dug into his gym bag and produced a couple of bottles of water. He tossed on to Dick, who caught it easily, and opened his to take a long drink. He gasped in air and said, “Besides, everyone knows you could never match me when it came to getting women.”

“Excuse me?” Dick asked, an amused look on his face. “Putting aside that I can’t believe you still consider women to be objects, have you seen the person I’ve been sharing blankets with the last few months?”

“Yeah, I have. Kory’s really a nice person. I mean, talk about the ultimate pity fu—”

“Watch it, buddy,” Dick interrupted him. “I’ve crippled people for worse.”

“Yeah,” Roy shot back, “but they were normals. You flip around great, Dickie, but man-to-man, I’d wreck you.”

Dick smiled. Neither of them were serious; this kind of banter between them had been going on since they were the Pre-Teen Titans. Some of it, he knew, lay in the fact that he and Roy were the only longstanding male Titans who had no super-powers. Wally and Gar and Vic had powers, and Garth was an Atlantean, but he and Roy only had what they could build in themselves.

And that being the case, there had always been a slight rivalry between the two of them; their training sessions were always just a little more intense when it was just them than when the other Titans joined in. Dick had a suspicion that their mentors, the Batman and the Green Arrow, tacitly encouraged that rivalry; neither were entirely what Dick would call psychologically normal adults.

But while he took Roy’s taunts for what they were, there was no way he could leave them unanswered. “Well, we still have a combat room. Unless you’d rather go play with your shaft…”

Roy rolled his eyes at the double entendre. “I thought you’d given up bad puns when you discovered girls,” he muttered. “Lead the way, Dickie. It’s more than time your famous butt got a foot planted in it.”

“Follow me, then.” Dick was grinning ear to ear, and Roy was too. They both knew that neither of them was serious, but the possibility of a good scrap without anything serious at stake was something neither of them ever could turn down. Dick led him into an adjoining room, devoid of weights or machines or any equipment, just four hundred square feet of floor covered by four hundred square feet of soft but firm mat.

“Grappling only?” Dick asked.

“Yeah.” Roy couldn’t resist another opportunity to tweak his old friend. “After all, if I marked up your pretty face, Kory would be furious. And *her*, I’m afraid of!”

“Shut up and fight,” Dick shot back.